Impact

I was reading an interview with a mid-career designer. When asked about having an impact, this designer responded by describing being able to design feature that would be used by millions of people, and knowing she was changing their day to day lives. Knowing that a design she created would be used by so many people gave her the feeling that she was having impact.

Later I was talking with a group of design managers and asked them about impact, the majority of their responses were focused on their peers; and their own ability to integrate design into their company’s development pipeline. Secondarily, they talked about mentoring the people on their team and being able to have an impact on helping them grow and develop professionally. For these managers, making space for design and ensuring the people on their team have the skills to deliver what is needed is having impact.

By contrast, when I discuss impact with design executives, their responses commonly focus on defining their company’s strategy, driving market share growth, and in more and more cases, having responsibility for revenue targets. For these executives demonstrating business leadership, customer value, growth, and revenue are signs they are having impact.

This is one of the mental shifts required to transition to an executive role.

But this shift doesn’t come with the title, this shift precipitates consideration for an executive role. In order to be short-listed, the people considering you for an executive role need believe you have the potential to exceed their expectations for delivering impact.

If your goal is to eventually become a design executive—and let me be clear no one should feel they have to become a design executive to be a successful designer; you need to build a reputation for delivering impact. That means not just saying you focus on customer value or that you think strategically. You have to demonstrate it through your actions, you need to show your abilities to get others to deliver your vision. Ideally your customers need to validate your assertion; that you delivered value to them. You don’t need to tell everyone you think strategically if you can demonstrate how the strategies you devised and shepherded through execution, pivoting, adjusting, mustering resources, in fact delivered what was promised, setting-up the organization for on-going success.

In short, you need to ensure your reputation proceeds you. That you have a personal brand that is recognized as a leader.